


The Root of the Matter

by mother_finch



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, mother-finch fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:18:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4596102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mother_finch/pseuds/mother_finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PROMPT: post-skip prompt: after Harold tells Root he doesn't want to see her for awhile, she truly feels alone. Shaw is gone, Harold doesn't want to see her and she barely speaks to The Machine since the stock exchange. if she went to John, she would like to think he would be there for her, but at this point she's too scared. she'd rather leave that box unturned cause it's better to think he'd be there for her than actually find out he would stand behind Harold in a heartbeat. she's lost. alone. broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Root of the Matter

Root Groves sits in a booth at the Grey Dog, pushing chocolate chip pancakes around her plate with a fork, not at all in the mood to eat. No one is there with her, and no one is coming for her either.

Still, she peers up- as if someone might just come and take a seat across from her- but sees nothing other than empty space and a woman in an apron vacuuming at the entrance. The sound reaches her as nothing more than dull white noise, and she sighs. Her depression is so thick, it's palpable. It presses down on her skin and seeps through her muscles and burrows into her bones. It weighs ten tons holding her down with restraints on her wrists and pulling her back with chains on her ankles. The weight of it presses down on her lungs, making it impossible to breathe. It takes her over- consumes her- making her gaunt in appearance as it feeds off what little she has left. It's blinding, eclipsing all light in sight, leaving her vision black and desolate. Alone. _I'm so very alone._

"How you doin' with them pancakes, Sweet Pea?" A kind voice curling in a southern drawl asks kindly. Root looks up from her vacant stare across the room, finding an auburn-haired waitress standing at the foot of the table, brown eyes tied up in smiles matching the one on her lips. She wears a pale blue dress, sporting an apron like the other woman, with an empty tray under one arm. At seeing Root's melancholy eyes, she frowns.

Placing the tray down on the table, the waitress slides in on the opposite side of the booth, studying Root's face. Root keeps it plain, bringing a light smile to her lips.  _Everything is fine._

* * *

 

"You ain't foolin' me," the waitress tells her, as if reading Root's mind, leaning her forearms on the table. "You can smile at me  _all_  ya want, but you've got some sad eyes." Root closes them in a slow blink, body feeling like a too-filled balloon. So many things swirl within her- bringing her to the bursting point- and she wants more than anything to relieve the pressure.

Opening her eyes, Root is unsure if she's pleased or annoyed to see the waitress still there. Her name tag reads 'Sarah'.

"My name's pretty plain, I know," Sarah tells Root with a sour note in her voice. Root's eyebrow cocks up suspiciously, and Sarah laughs kindly.

"I'm in college for Criminology. Taking a course in profiling. I've been tryin' ta read people I see." Root smiles at her, a tiny and half-genuine grin.

"You're doing real good," Root responds to her encouragingly, and Sarah gives a modest blush.

"Thanks."

"Sarah! The Hell you doing,  _Girl_?!" An angry, New York voice shouts from somewhere further into the diner. "I'm not paying you to sit on your  _ass_!"

Sarah's eyes roll as she pushes up from her seat. "If you'll  _excuse_  me," she says with a humorously bitter tone, "I have to wait on the  _other_  diners here." Root's lip quirks in a twinge of laughter, the sadness she feels lifting slightly as she sees not another person in sight.

Sarah stands, smoothing out her dress with a final sigh. Taking a last glance at Root, her eyes flicker to the plate.

"That's on me," she adds, nodding towards it. "As long as ya eat some of it." Before Root has time to protest, the young college girl disappears behind the kitchen's swinging doors. Root looks back to her untouched meal, fork pushing the pieces once more. She doubts she'd have even had the energy to muster up a rebuttal anyway. Just like everyone and everything else, even Root had seemed to have left herself.  _No one's left._

A head once filled with voices is graveyard silent, any thought that does come to her echoes off hollow walls. Shaw is gone, and no matter how hard Root tries to hold on to the sound of her voice, all things fade with time, and Sameen Shaw is turning to a whisper. Harold Finch more or less abandoned her. After the Elizabeth Bridges incident, he had been reluctant to so much as look in her direction. If she was South, Harold was most definitely facing North.  _It hurts_. It hurts to the point where she can't even allow his voice to play, otherwise the pain will rip her wide open all over again. Lastly, the Machine hadn't made so much as a peep since the stock exchange. Root had begged for Her, needed Her now more than ever, but the God kept Her silence. Root's head was so very empty without the voices of those closest to her to occupy it.

Putting down her fork, Root slides from the booth, food untouched. She looks at it, three pancakes partially sliced, sitting cold on a white plate. She thinks lightly of Sarah, of her compromise, and how she is unable to fulfill it. Root wonders, if she wasn't feeling so numb, would there be guilt in it. She hasn't the will to stay and figure it out. Tossing down the money and a healthy tip for the kind Crime Major, Root silently slips from the diner, setting out into the icy Manhattan morning.

______\ If Your Number's Up /______

Her hands are stuffed in her pockets as she shuffles down Mulberry Street, wind biting as it billows between buildings, causing drafts as strong as hurricanes. A few people brush past her, but she barely notices them- her mind is too far gone.

 _Shaw_. Sameen Shaw. Her friend, her literal partner in crime, her... Her what? There was never anything set in stone between them, but sometimes Root had wished there were. A spark. A lit match. A  _something_. She hadn't known it herself, not at first. Not until she was too far surrounded to ever be able to dig her way out.

_It started with the small things._

Seeing her in the middle of action; catching a glance from the corner of her eye at Shaw's stone-clad expression; hearing a smart alec crack escape her lips in the face of death. Root found herself admiring those moments with a sort of awe different from the rest. It began with a  _'Wow- incredible'_ to a  _'Damn, that was kinda hot'_  until it came to  _'I could spend the rest of my life like this.'_

That last part sort of terrified her. Still terrifies her. She'd never been so comfortable around someone, nor felt the need to be around them so much. It's a sort of attraction like a moth to a flame, like a pin to a magnet- inevitable and impossible to fight. Sometimes, Root could almost convince herself Shaw felt the same way.  _Almost_.

 _It was never easy to tell,_ Root sighs internally to herself, feet kicking up the smallest bits of gravel along her path. _There are a lot of things I can read about Sameen, but attraction has never been one of them._

Until the time that it was.

 _Not with me,_  Root remembers, almost wistfully.  _No, it was Tomas_. She pulls a face at the remembrance of the name and the face that goes with it. She recalls with vivid clarity how Shaw acted around him, and jealousy automatically begins leaking into her veins.  _That was easy to see_. However, every time Root advanced a step forward, Shaw took a half step back, locking up defensively. It seemed like, no matter how hard Root tried, she would never be able to catch the quick fox she pursued. It was a constant game of cat and mouse, but even Root was unsure what role she held.  _Predator or Prey?_

 _It doesn't matter_ , Root spits out to herself venomously, dark hands closing in on her thoughts, tugging at her clothes as they add weight to her restraints.  _It doesn't matter because she's gone._  Root hasn't stopped looking for Shaw- she doubted at this point if she ever truly would- but she has come up empty handed with each lead she chased. This was a different game entirely, not of one hunting the other, but of one chasing after her.

_There was almost something there. I know it._

Root could feel it in her bones. She holds it in her heart and it settles definitely in her flesh.  _If the circumstances were different..._

Shaw had kissed her in the heat of battle and the knowledge of death, giving her a swell of hope before wrenching it back as she pushed Root away. It had to be the worst feeling. Seeing the person you care about more than anyone else- the person you want to be with in the best and the worst possible way- being shot down as you sit there, helpless, behind an elevator gate. It gives her nightmares, harrowing dreams that leave her more exhausted after sleep- when she sleeps.

Most nights, she is too alone to sleep. Sure, she'd always slept alone, but this was different. This wasn't being alone at night, this was being alone in the world.

Root laughs in spite of herself bitterly, eyes filled with ice and the promise of tears.  _And there was a time when I relished having no one in my life._  How the tables had changed. She went from being mad from loving no one, to being mad for loving so many. And she seemed so out of touch with them all. That all she put into them was ripped from her as they went away, leaving her empty inside.  _Well, almost empty._

They took the good things with them- the fond memories and happy thoughts- leaving her with the rotting guilt and overwhelming sorrow. She had to plow through it, each step like its own little war, and she had to do it alone. Out of everything that was told to her, out of any scenario, one never occurred to her.

Harold Finch would leave her.

You could tell her anything and she would have an explanation as to why it would, or wouldn't, happen. She could tell you why the sky wouldn't fall; she could rationalize the idea of something progressing with Sameen Shaw, and- until only five months ago- Root Groves could explain to you with her entire head and heart why Harold Finch would never turn against her.

_It happened._

And everything she knew turned on its head.

It all started with a Trojan Horse, a woman, and the world's most sinister Artificial Intelligence.  _If that doesn't spell out trouble, I'm not sure what does_. Root only wanted to save him, she thought she'd made that clear; apparently spelling it out is no match to saying the words in full. She was set on Elizabeth Bridges, Harold's teaching associate, and something more, considering the glow in his eye at seeing her. Root remembers it with a sad smile. The way, once her number came up, he was Hell bent on following her. On keeping her safe; on protecting her. This wasn't just another life to him. No matter how hard he protested that all lives mattered equally, this one was something more.  _Why the Hell did she have to be something more?_

It frustrates Root immensely. She was going to get him  _killed_.  _She was going to lead Samaritan right to him, and he'd be dead before he had the time to realize that his shit hit the fan._   _I just lost Shaw,_ Root thinks, throat constricting. Part of her wants to shut down the thoughts, to cleanse her entire mind, but the ball's rolling too fast to stop.  _I couldn't lose him too. Not him_ and _Shaw._

Bridges might have been important to Harold, but Harold was important to Root. She knew from the way he looked at her, the way the thought of her ex-husband disrupting her ruffled his feathers, the way he had the nervous flutter of a small boy in his pursuit that it wouldn't be easy for him to let her go. Root had planned the murder perfectly, sure to not let Elizabeth feel a thing, but the Machine had other plans. As much as Root urged- begged- Her to let this one slip, She didn't.

When Harold caught Root in Elizabeth's apartment, he quickly put two and two together. Root's heart aches at seeing the betrayal on his face, even as a memory. It is real enough to touch. The way his eyes glistened with sorrow, his jaw twitching as he tried desperately to hold himself together, and he danced about jumpily, too wound up over the realization to remain still. He was begging Root not to do it- to let him die for the cause instead of her. Root chose his life. He chose Elizabeth's.

Root remembers the pain of watching him die, nerves all giving up on him after he downed the vile neurotoxin. 

_‘There’s no need to kill her if I’m already dead.’_

_‘How much time do I have?’  
_

She watched him convulse as he fell to the bed, skin turning white and going clammy. Shaking like a leaf although his heart was still as stone. His message was clear: Beth Bridges would not die.

Root felt an insufferable amount of anger at it all, almost equal to the absolute terror and despair of finding herself losing her best friend.  _How could he do this?_

Later, she put herself in his place. If someone were planning to murder Shaw, she would kill the bastard.  _Still going to_ , she adds to herself, eyes seeing red as a flashing glimpse of Martine Rousseau and John Greer great her shortly. She would do anything and everything in her power to keep Shaw safe. And she realized this was exactly what Harold had been doing.

To make matters worse, she'd sabotaged the relationship, all the while destroying the Trojan Horse- a creation made through months of hard work and intricate planning. Brought to nothing but metallic chunks and whatever powder a hammer disintegrated it to. Whether he was blinded by love or blinded by rage, Harold requested her out of his sight. Indefinitely. Perhaps permanently.

Standing there with wilting flowers in his hands and broken trust in his eyes, it wasn't her worst case scenario. He hadn't decided they were not friends, just that they were nothing for now. He asked her to leave.

She left.

And here she stands, five months later, unsure how she's even made it this far. She's absolutely alone in the world, broken beyond any repair, and wandering the streets of a city that has become a stranger to her.

Suddenly, a horn blares deafeningly in her left ear, causing her to jar painfully from her thoughts. Body snapping off auto pilot, her senses fire back up. She sees the crosswalk before her, opposing sidewalk filled with terrified pedestrians waving for her attention. Her ears are drowning in the sound of a horn, and the shriek of someone behind her. The coldness that had been surrounding her makes itself known, sucker punching her with icy hands. In the matter of a second, all of this falls together, and Root whips her head towards the noise, eyes instantly shot with bright yellow light.

A car.

It's barreling at her, the yellow paint of a taxi evident, and it's close enough for Root to register a steel faced man with a five o'clock shadow swearing at her through the windshield.  _He's not going to stop,_  Root thinks to herself quickly, gears in her mind chugging into overdrive. Everything slows down around her, the racing cab inching to a crawl. She can feel the wind against her back coming in a slow burst, and watches her hair billow in it just as sluggishly. Only her head is running at normal speed.

 _I need to get out of the way,_  she tells herself before stopping.  _But the question is: do I want to?_

 _What would it matter if I got hit by a car_ , Root thinks to herself, dark parts of her mind snaking out to play.  _I'm too numb to feel anything anyway_. Maybe too, this would bring Harold out of his shunning, to see her. Surely he wouldn't deny her a visit if she was in a hospital bed?

She hasn't the time to decide before time warps back into normal tempo, the taxi like a bull charging at red. Something wraps forcefully around her upper arm, causing the material of her jacket to burn her skin, and she is yanked out of the way. Her teeth rattle in her gums and her shoulder feels like it is being ripped from its socket. Her feet barely have time to keep pace, and she stumbles to catch up with herself. The taxi soars by, hair being whipped by the wind and back nicking the mirror.

She sucks in a steadying breath, trying to bring the loose ends of her thoughts together, when the grasp on her arm pulls her around to look at a man with salt-and-pepper hair and icy blue eyes. For a moment, she thinks it's John Reese.

"Lady, you okay?" The man asks, a hand now on either of her shoulders as he looks worriedly into her eyes. She doesn't respond to his question, too deflated that he is just another stranger and not a friend. "Hey?  _Hello_?"

"You can let go of me now," she tells him tersely, voice much more dark than she'd intended. But something within her is miffed- and it has nothing to do with the pedestrian specifically. It has to do with the rest of the world, but he is her surrogate. His eyes flicker in surprise at the overall calmness in her tone, then he drops his hands to his sides.

"Are you okay?" He asks once more. "You were almost hit by a-"

"Taxi," Root finishes, ice in her tone. "I'm aware." The concern leaves his eyes as his brow line hardens. Without saying anything more, she turns, stalking around the corner and down the street, pushing roughly past the few citizens that stopped with the commotion.

"You're  _welcome_!" He yells down to her, but she ignores him entirely. As she makes it away from the center of attention, her muscles relax, and her fast pace slows to its plodding gate. She thinks back to the man that tore her from the street, and how she thought- for a second- that it was John. John had come for her. Someone was still there for her.

 _I have to find Reese,_  she decides at last, purpose flooding her bones as she adjusts her aimless corse towards the NYPD station. I _need to talk to him. He'll understand._

_______\ We'll Find You /_______

_He'll understand. Won't he?_

As Root approaches the beige, Roman style building wedged between two brick edifices, she is unsure. Like herself, Harold was his best friend. He'd known Harold longer than her, laid his life on the line for him, and would just as easily put his life in Harold's hands as he would put car keys. Reese would stop at nothing to keep Finch safe. All of them safe.

_But after what I did to Harold, would I still be one of them?_

None of their group were the most sociable of people; however, she's sure that Harold at least told John what had happened. After all, with a mysterious disappearance amongst their already small group, an explanation would be necessary if not demanded.

Root's steps become sluggish as she approaches the building. She wonders if it is suicide- a criminal like herself walking willingly within a block's radius of the homicide department of the NYPD. Sure, the Machine had every record of her erased from everywhere. Root Groves exists to no one else. Still, this doesn't mean that no one else hadn’t seen her committing a crime under an alias.  _It's a risk I'll just have to take,_  she says to herself, while silently adding,  _There's nothing left to lose anyway._

Pulling out her cellphone, she sends John a quick message.

ME: Have a minute?

The time after feels like agonizing hours as she waits with the last string of hope in her hands. He can either come back with a box to secure it in or scissors to kill it. Seconds that feel like centuries tick by as she paces back and forth on the street's corner.

JOHN REESE: I have a lunch break in three.

A flood of relief washes over her with the reply, and she can feel her hammering heart softening in her chest. Quickly, she responds.

ME: Canal and Elizabeth.

Ring.

JOHN REESE: Okay.

Root stows her phone in her pocket, leaning against the icy skyscraper at the corner, left with one hundred and eighty seconds to self-reflect. To self-evaluate. To self-criticize.

 _What are you doing here?_  She asks herself harshly, throat already feeling tight as she closes her eyes. She thinks of John Reese, and how in less than three minutes, he'll be heading away from his desk, down the steps of the building, and on his way to the corner. She wants more than anything to talk to him. No, what she wants more than anything is for him to listen. Just to know that he is there for her, that she still has one person left in this hollow shell of a city. _But what if I don't?_

_What if he won't be there for me? What if the only reason he is coming to meet me is to tell me to stay away face to face?_

The questions sting her like hornets and pull her apart like wolves until her brain is a swollen, painful mess. _I can't do it._  Looking down at her phone, she sees that she only has thirty-one seconds left.

Her mind begins to race as she tries to process three months worth of thoughts in thirty seconds. She thinks of how close Harold and John are, how long she's been gone, and all that she's done. To confront John Reese after all of that? And just to see if he will stick by her side? She'd rather leave that stone unturned. She fears, if she prods the rock, a cobra will uncoil from underneath, fangs bared to send her a fatal strike.

Root's fingers begin to tremble as her thoughts come in more like flashes of photos instead of sentences- mind going too fast, making her sick and finicky.

 Fifteen seconds.

 _I'd rather have hope_ , she decides at last, eyes tearing open and welling hotly in frustration and tormenting thoughts. In all of this, the idea that John would take Harold's side in a heartbeat is too much for her to bear. No, she'd rather be able to hold on to the idea that John would be there for her- even if it's merely that. An idea. Having to bear the realization that that might not be the case is too overwhelming.  _If I lose one more thing, I'm going to lose myself entirel_ y. Root can already feel her mind slipping away, traveling down crazed paths bathed with insanity.

Looking up, Root sees a tall man with a chiseled face and dark hair sprinkled with white descending the marble steps of the federal building. He turns, heading towards the corner in a sharp suit to match sharp eyes.

John Reese. Or, better known by the rest of New York City as, Detective John Riley.  _Save me the irony talk_ , he thinks to himself, just like he thinks every time his credentials come up. Someone who belongs behind bars himself putting others there instead. However, this little inside joke is lost on him, as his mind is set on a far more pressing matter.

Only minutes ago, Root had talked to him for the first time in months. He'd asked Harold to tap her phone, to track it so he could pin her down, but Harold could drag his feet farther into the sand than anyone John had ever met. John couldn't blame him. But he couldn't agree with him either; not quite.

And so, with this short telephone conversation, John decided that this was an opportunity he could not pass up. Usually, he would dash out the door with the first excuse at his fingertips, needing to escape the paperwork and legal talk of the office and take to the streets. But Lionel Fusco hadn't ceased to hound him on it, threatening that John might lose his job if he kept it up. Reese didn't care. He threatened John that, as his partner, he could get Fusco fired as well. That, as much as John could act humored and careless about, would not happen on his accord. The job wasn't more than a cover to John, but he knew more than most that it was a lifestyle for Fusco. So, today, he kept his nose in his paperwork like a role model detective until the bell for recess let him free.

He tries to keep casual as he comes within mere feet of the corner, fingers smoothing down the trim of his blazer, but his eyes search for the one face in the crowd. There's the longing of reuniting with a friend lost for years in him, although he keeps it all contained behind expressionless eyes.

There is a small cluster of people on the end of the block, and his eyes scan each one.

None of them are Root Groves.

Looking down, he checks his phone, then the names of the streets, making sure that he's got the meeting place right. Curious, he rounds the corner, looking down the other street. He catches the last trace of a brunette curl slipping into a dense crowd, black heel following it into oblivion. Raising his eyebrows, he sighs. Then, after a moment of thought and deliberation, John Reese shakes his head, starting back towards the police station to- willingly for the first time- finish his paperwork.


End file.
